Gadgetell | Tech News, Reviews, and Interesting Things

The buzz at the Hong Kong Electronics Fair came with the judging for the 10th HKEIA Award for Outstanding Innovation and Technology.  Some of the entrees that won have been kept so secret, there is no information on the Internet about them yet, not even on the manufacturers’ sites.  I am sure that will change as soon as the fair ends and the real marketing starts.  In such cases, links to manufacturers’ websites have been provided for future reference.

Each winner received a trophy and a year’s worth of bragging rights.  Check out the winners after the break and come back tomorrow for my thoughts on these winners. 

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Developer: VTech
Price: $99.95
Availability: Out now
Pros: Great phone, great instant message/instant voice tool
Cons: Spare a USB port buddy?
Overall: Decent phone, does all it says with aplomb.  If you’ve got a lot of IM’ers or just want to have IM without booting up, check out this combo.

Like a product stolen right out of Spaceship Earth at Disney’s Epcot, VTech advances the lowly house phone into something from our ancesters wouldn’t have even guessed.  Our Arnold Zafra picked up this phones release a while back and expected good things from it.  After reviewing it, he was spot on.  V-tech has done a pretty good job at merging the texting fun of your cell phone into your home phone format.

The phone itself is nice, the form factor is pretty similar to a Palm.  The qwerty keypad is nicely laid out and is quite usable.  I had no issue tapping away messages or answering the phone.  What I really enjoyed about the VTech is the ringer choices.  Not only do they stock some nice ones, like you’d expect on a cell phone, but they offer the ability to download new ones.  Really nice for those of us with short attention spans.

The phone comes with software you’ll need to install on your home PC.  Once installed and running, it drops a tray icon in and your phone can now IM at will.  Connecting through the phone was as easy as hitting the Messenger button.  It can connect with MSN Messenger, Windows Live and AOL.  You can have multiple text conversations going at once, which is handy.  It also has voice chat for VOIP applications.  I didn’t get to try that.

One minor annoyance was the need for the unit to plug into an open USB slot and the phone line.  For many of us, these two things are not far apart but it would have been so nice to have this hook into WiFi.  Just saying, I am running out of USB slots and I seem to be too lazy to get a hub.  To it’s credit, the cordless phone didn’t interfere with any of the crazy things of got going on; its interference-free DECT 6.0.

In fairness, the phone and recharger can be almost anywhere in your house; it doesn’t need to be by the home base.

All in all, a great phone that can be much more, especially for your teens who hog up your computer time.  Now you can let them IM without monopolizing your computer.  Sweet.

Company site: [VTech]

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In this day and age of high powered mobile phones and web based communication applications, we couldn’t help but wonder if there is still a need for a home phone. The Vtech people must have the same thought on their mind when they were conceptualizing the IS6110 cordless phone that’s why they decided to include an Instant Messaging function.

Well, it looks like Vtech might have caught onto something new. For one, their IS6110 cordless phone is the world’s first cordless phone with built-in IM features with support for MSN Messenger, Windows Live Messenger and AOL Instant Messenger. And for that, it certainly deserves some accolades. But if you think that IM is all there is in the IS6110, think again as it is packed with some nifty features too.

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